


A Further Application of Diplomacy To Life in the Dunbroch Court

by Missy



Category: Brave (2012)
Genre: Bathroom Humor, Gen, Humor, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Post-Canon, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-24
Updated: 2015-12-24
Packaged: 2018-05-08 22:04:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5514992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missy/pseuds/Missy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When a neighboring king visits, Merida must give a speech - and in the process learns that the king and her mother had an unpleasant encounter during Elinor's courting days.  </p><p>(Merida also learns that she ought to watch her tongue a bit more, but that might just be a lesson she'll never learn).</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Further Application of Diplomacy To Life in the Dunbroch Court

**Author's Note:**

  * For [magdarko](https://archiveofourown.org/users/magdarko/gifts).



This was what a learning process looks like, Elinor decided as she swept flour off the sideboard and peered over her daughter’s shoulder. It moved in fits and in starts, and it wasn’t exactly neat or perfect – but it was motion all the same. 

“Aire du Faire is spelled with an e,” she said. “But otherwise it’s very good, Merida. They’ll be impressed by your speech.” The royal visitors would be arriving on Monday, and the family was scheduled to welcome them with a feast and a speech in the main hall a few hours after they docked. For Elinor that meant managing the children’s comportment, and for Merida it meant her first real act as a hostess would involve reciting a short tale about the interconnected worlds and lives of their kingdoms.

“I’d do a wee bit of settling,” her daughter said. “if it means I get to keep my head.”

“Don’t listen to your da’s tales,” Elinor said. “They left that beheading business back in the early 9s. That’s centuries ago. Nearly eons.”

“As far as you’re concerned or as far as THEY’RE concerned?” Meridas asked. She dropped a blot of ink on the table and cursed before cleaning it up. 

Elinor didn’t correct her speech – that, too, was progress. “After you finish this draft, we should go riding. Clean air will do us both some good.”

“Can we go to the falls?” Merida asked, instantly perking up.

“If you finish this first,” she said. “I’ll pack some cookies and cakes for the ride.”

Elinor couldn’t help herself – she smiled when her daughter bent closer to the paper, when the paragraphs started flowing from her pen in heavy spurts. There was, it seemed, a way to get everything completed – if only they stayed honest with each other.

%%%%%

The water was shallow and warm by the stream, and Elinor clucked her tongue to encourage the horse to drink its fill. Merida had rushed ahead and set out a picnic for them, and with the horses resting they took in the view as they ate.

“Ma?” Merida asked. “Is there a reason why we’re working so hard to make these people happy? Besides the old beheading thing?”

Elinor sighed. Her daughter's leading questions suggested that she knew something, that her father had started the story without checking with his wife first. “I suppose I should tell the story – before your da tells it to you and makes me sound like a saint.” She continued, “when I was a wee lass – older than you by a few years – your father and the king of Aire du Faire competed in a game for my hand. The day was tied – feat for feat, four for four. The final contest was a swim across the great golden lake near my family’s homecastle. I had a terrible pash on your father, and well –I didn’t want to be married to another man. So I sent Roderick – the king’s proper name – Roderick a great bowl of prunes seasoned with cola root. Roderick spent the entire contest in the privy house while your dad won my hand.”

“Mom!” Merida gasped, and then she chuckled. “And you thought it was so terrible of me to shoot for my own hand! There you were poisoning people with prunes!”

“It wasn’t poison!” Elinor said. “He’s fine, he only had to spend most of a single day in the necessary! And because of that day, years later, we celebrate his escape by meeting for toasts and a banquet.” She shook her loosened hair, laughing ruefully at herself. “Though he's quite sure it's a celebration of the seizure of the land fat your fathers people paid him to go away and withdraw his suit. Oh, I was a wee stormy thing in those days. I barely remember what it was like to be that girl.”

Merida kicked at a stone by her toe. She was remembering the bad, old days and stiffer, disapproving Elinor - her mother automatically intervened. “C’mon, up off the rock; we should go riding before the family misses us and calls out the dogs.”

Merida shook her doldrums off as quickly as she’d let them descend over here. “I’ll race you to the top!” she said, and mother and daughter were soon on the steep trail to the best possible bridle path.”

%%%%%

On the day of the ceremony, Merida found herself feeling surprisingly anxious. She’d never had to give a speech before so many people before; she was, she admitted, nervous for the first time in her life.

“Easy now wee one,” said Elinor as she watched Merida take center stage. “Be calm, stand straight, be true…”

Media could do all of those things. Or at least she hoped she could.

The speech itself went quite smoothly. She didn’t even falter once, and her voice didn’t shake. The banquet afterwards proceeded as normal. 

And then Merida opened her big mouth. 

The king of Aire du Faire had made a joke about his appetite, and she’d asked him if he’d wanted any prunes and well – it was the wrong thing to say. The embarrassing thing to say. It had sounded much funnier in her head.

It was also the thing that started a teensy sword fight between her father and the king when her mother's honor was called into question.

As the women watched their clans divide into cheering teams, Elinor sighed and rested her goblet upon the table. “One more wee tip, daughter,” Elinor said, as she climbed her chair. “When your guest decides to throw a fit and you need to calm them down right away, there’s no easier way to do it than to stand on the banquet table and start YELLING AT THEIR FOOLISHNESS. YOU ARE BEHAVING LIKE BEASTS IN FRONT OF YOUR OWN CHILDREN!”

That thankfully stopped any beheading that might have happened. They ended up making friends again, she and her old swain – and Merida learned something about thinking before she spoke, a lesson she would re-learn many times over. 

Elinor wouldn’t let her daughter live down the incident – in the kindest of ways, of course. She was nothing if not not poised, smart, professional, intelligent, well-spoken and a wonderful mother. And also able to laugh at herself, to throw herself into a waterfall squealing, to give herself completely to silliness – and to be the best advocate her daughter would ever have.

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Yuletide! I love this relationship in canon and wanted to do it justice, so i hope this treat scratches that itch for you too!


End file.
